Abstract
Pernod-Ricard is a French company which produces alcoholic beverages. It was established in 1975 with the merger of two French anise-based spirit producers namely Pernod and Ricard.
During the initial years, the company's strategy was to strengthen its global position by building a strong international supply and retail network. Soon the company started to expand, purchasing local companies in order to enter foreign markets. Since this strategy was very successful, Pernod-Ricard started a series of big mergers to settle its position as one of the leading alcohol industries' in the world.
Pernod-Ricard is considered as the biggest (along with the British Diageo) alcoholic beverage producer in the world. It sells 97 million boxes of alcohol a year (one box being 9L), its revenue amounts to €7.2 billion and its profit is estimated to a comfortable €850 million. Pernod-Ricard employs around 19,000 people all across the globe.
The most recent and most important acquisition in the PR history would be the acquisition of the Swedish giant V&S. As a matter of fact that acquisition was aimed at improving the placement of PR in the Northern European countries and in North America. Indeed, the most well-known brand owned by V&S is the famous vodka brand Absolut which is a bestselling beverage in the US (5 million boxes sold in 2007).
It is of primary importance for any company which plans to enter a foreign market, to make an estimation of that market and to understand the trends and tendencies of the international environment it plans to operate in. Every fact and data can help in a different way to forecast challenges and difficulties, to find out opportunities in the market and to form a relevant strategy. There are different levels and numerous environmental factors for a company but here we would be focusing on so called foreign elements such as demographic, economic, technological, cultural, institutional factors as our work is devoted to Pernod-Ricard and in particular to its entry to the US market. In this part, we are going to be discussing various elements of the international environment in the US.
